


on: the Concept of Home

by sugar_is_poison



Series: The Years [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Beta Read, One Night Stands, One Shot, Post-Break Up, Post-Time Skip, Rio, Separations, but kagehina endgame implied, like very light barely even mentioned, oihina centric, very very very light smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27431965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugar_is_poison/pseuds/sugar_is_poison
Summary: When Hinata Shoyo was 18 and standing on foreign lands, home—as a concept—was no longer something he could afford to think about on a daily basis.In which Hinata encountered Oikawa in Rio, and overcame homesickness and a bad break-up.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, also past, past - Relationship
Series: The Years [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983110
Comments: 6
Kudos: 95
Collections: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020





	on: the Concept of Home

**Author's Note:**

> \- tw: implied sexual content  
> \- cw: mentions of food

When Hinata Shoyo was 18 and standing on foreign lands, home—as a concept—was no longer something he could afford to think about on a daily basis.

Work, train indoors, work, get lost in the city, eat, train on the beach, sleep. That was his schedule for a typical day.

Rinse and repeat.

Shoyo knew the importance of upkeeping a strict schedule because the two years he had promised himself weren’t all that long and he had a lot to learn. Even if he did have the time to pause and reminisce, he wouldn’t _dare_ to. Lying in the dark corner of his room, clutching his phone and staring at his screensaver of his high school friends could be deafening. That, and a particular ex-boyfriend (now a regular on Schweiden Adlers) whose presence could be felt even half a world away. Shoyo would rather not mellow in his post-breakup sadness. So he locked it—the idea of “home”—away in the back of his mind, kept his eyes looking forward, staring bravely into the unknown.

Then, Oikawa Tooru showed up on the Brazilian beach as if a washed-up mermaid, and brought a piece of home to him.

_You have to be kidding me. How is this even a thing?_

Oikawa wasn’t an eloquent speaker by all accounts, but when Shoyo heard the familiar phonics of Japanese spoken back to him for the first time in months, tears threatened to break loose.

_The great king!_

The shock settled in, and perhaps it was because of their maturation since high school, or the fact that they were probably the only two non-tourist Japanese people within a radius of three kilometers, the gap Shoyo once felt between himself and Oikawa seemed to have vanished.

He sent a stupid selfie and a cocky text to Kageyama.

_Look who I found?_

Subtext: not you.

He got left on read.

Shoyo was a little selfish, a little competitive, and a little hopeful.

-

Oikawa treated him to dinner that night, the two feasting away on fresh seafood and sharing stories of their past, present, and future.

Shoyo couldn’t help but ask if Kageyama’s old senpai had been keeping up with his kouhai’s games.

_No._ Oikawa’s face scrunched up with overly-pretentious spite. _The same way Kageyama would_ , Shoyo’s brain reminded him gently. He shushed it.

Shoyo recounted his own journey from Japan to Rio, and listened to Oikawa talk about his childhood dreams coming true. When the name “Jose Blanco” was mentioned, the older man’s eyes flickered with admiration and longing, under the fluorescent lighting of the small restaurant. Shoyo let his mind wander for a second, musing if his eyes flickered the same way, when he first saw the Little Giant on TV that winter day as an innocent kid.

Above all, he _understood_ Oikawa’s decision to move overseas. They were both restless souls, ditching everything they’d known behind just to run after the taste of a new challenge, one step closer to their dream, as unreliable as “dreams” get. Shoyo always respected Oikawa no matter if he was on the winning or losing side, but this understanding—dared him say, _similarity_ —drew him even closer to and more curious of the older man. The mystic figure clouded with the label of “the Great King” had never looked more defined and real.

After dinner, Shoyo invited Oikawa to play a game of beach volleyball with him. He was a little hotheaded, now looking back in hindsight, expecting a professional player to entertain his stupid little matches. But Oikawa said yes, with an air of sincerity and something else that Shoyo couldn’t quite put his finger on. Perhaps a look of challenge.

A few minutes into the game, Oikawa fell, face first, into the sand. The elegance in his posture that enchanted Shoyo when they first played their practice game was nowhere to be found.

_Don’t laugh,_ he shouted, _I’m a beginner! Go easy!_

Shoyo tried not to but he let his heartfelt laugh bubble out. A weight that he didn’t know was pressing on his chest and choking his throat got lifted away.

_Seeing you has put me in a super-duper extra awesomely good mood! Thanks!_

He beamed at Oikawa. And Oikawa beamed back at him.

They lost the 2-2 game to the beer brothers.

Shoyo knew it was late, so he asked a little breathlessly, if not too eagerly, _Oikawa-san! Oikawa-san! How long are you gonna be in Rio? Where are you staying? Let’s trade contact info! Please please please?_

_Calm down! Geez! The team is here for a week for some practice games. We’re staying at a hotel not far from here._

He gushed over Oikawa, generously showering the older man in a sea of praises, practically begging him to play with him more.

Oikawa blushed.

_The_ Oikawa Tooru, great king of Aoba Johsai, one of Shoyo’s most formidable enemies in high school, now a professional player in the Argentine League, _blushed_.

-

Things started improving after Shoyo found Oikawa.

Here is his new and improved daily schedule: work, text Oikawa, train indoors, work, _not_ get lost in the city, eat lunch with Oikawa, train on the beach with Oikawa, watch My Hero Academia in Portuguese with Pedro, sleep.

Rinse and repeat.

-

At the start of the week that Shoyo and Oikawa played as partners for beach volleyball, more often than not, they lost.

The losses, in and of themselves, didn’t quite matter to Shoyo. He was forced back to Level 0 for beach volleyball, so the process of losing, losing, and losing was foreseen. In that process, he absorbed as much knowledge and experience as he could, melting himself, spreading himself paper thin, then reconstructing himself from the ground up. Shoyo knew he was getting better and stronger with each ball set for Oikawa, each spike made, and each dig bumped up.

Plus, watching Oikawa play and being in sync in the way he thinks inspired Shoyo—to say the least. The effortless setting reappeared after day two, and Shoyo was floored. The precision, the awareness, and the consideration of the wind all added together, producing the best setter Shoyo had ever played with. Probably even better than Kageyama.

Correction: definitely better than Kageyama.

But nonetheless, he was feeling a sense of impending dread. He desperately tried to pinpoint what it was and hold onto that feeling of something momentarily fleeting away. The weight that hung in his chest somehow found its way back in, snaking around his organs and threatening to crush him down from the inside.

That feeling bubbled in him whenever he highfived Oikawa with burning sand underneath their feet, whenever they shared a casual drink (neither of them had alcohol because of their equally strict diet) in the afterhours, and whenever they said goodbye at the end of the day. Shoyo might have a tiny clue of what that feeling was.

After all, he felt the same thing whenever he looked at Kageyama, after making the decision to move to Rio his third year of high school.

-

The night before Oikawa’s team left Rio, they finally won against the beer brothers. Oikawa made the final spike from a “not-half-bad set” from Shoyo, and Shoyo turned around in time to look at Oikawa with pure joy and elation, only to see his expression reflected back on the other man’s face. The feeling of a win after so many losses was toxic, dizzying. Electrical sparks traveled down Shoyo’s spine, and he swore if it wasn’t for his self-awareness kicking in, he would’ve rushed in to plant a big fat kiss on Oikawa’s chapped lips right there on the public Rio beach. Shoyo stopped himself in time, because he was much more disciplined than a horny high school third year stealing kisses in a dark club room. He ignored that feeling of dread again.

The beer brothers treated them to dinner.

Everything was going perfectly fine, until Oikawa put his left hand down after using it to gesture during his talk. On Shoyo’s right thigh under the disguise of the tablecloth. As if it _belonged_ there.

Shoyo froze. He peeked at Oikawa from the corners of his eyes.

Oikawa’s face was infallible. He grinned his polite smile, nodded to what the beer brothers had to say, and responded in English with ease. His index finger of his left hand, however, was tracing slow circles on Shoyo’s thigh muscles.

It was a competition, and it was so _on_.

Shoyo beamed at Oikawa, responded to the questions of the beer brothers in broken Portuguese, and ignored the white hot stare from his right side.

The fingers lifted the corner of his shorts.

Shoyo took a deep breath, and tried to focus on their conversation topic, which slipped his mind once again when the warm fingers moved towards between his thighs, slowly inching up towards a certain destination.

Shoyo coughed violently.

_Hinata-kun, are you okay?_ _Do you need water?_ Oikawa asked with sincerity, but his twitching brows gave it away.

This man knew what he was doing to Shoyo and he was enjoying it!

Shoyo glared at him.

_I’m fine_. He squeezed the words out from between his teeth.

Oikawa gave him a firm squeeze at the root of his thigh.

Shoyo got hard.

-

What happened afterwards was only natural.

If you consider having a one night stand with your first year high school crush as natural, that is.

When Shoyo was being pushed closer and closer to his limit, when he saw white stars bursting behind his eyelids, when he screamed coming undone, one thought was spinning incessantly in his mind. _I could fall for you._

I could fall for you, the ways you set the ways you smirk and the ways you possess my body. I could fall for you, in this stranger’s town, in this fleeting week. I could fall for you, for home is far away, yet it was right here beneath my head, with a warm body and a beating heart. 

But that thought remained as a thought, and it never made it out of his lips. Shoyo rested his head on Oikawa’s shoulder, staring outside the window, at city lights far, far away. His mind swam somewhere else, somewhere to the East. Homebound.

_I broke up with Iwa-chan before I came to Argentina,_ Oikawa said suddenly, just when Shoyo thought the man had fallen asleep, _or before he left for California—doesn’t matter now. You did the same with Tobio-kun, did you not?_

Shoyo’s heart clenched. He nodded, his nose going sour.

-

Three years ago, right before they graduated, Shoyo told Kageyama that he was determined to train for beach volleyball. It was early spring, they were alone in the school gymnasium after practice.

_So you’re leaving me?_

_Yeah._

_There’s no stopping you, isn’t there?_

_No._

Kegayama nodded. _Then I wish you the best of luck._

He turned on his heels, heading towards the door.

_Can’t you—!!!_ Shoyo shouted frustratedly, tears swelling up, _can’t you say something?_

Kageyama stopped in his tracks, but he didn’t turn around. _Say what, boke?_

Say that you don’t want me to go, say that you will miss me, say that you love me and won’t stop doing so when I’m worlds away.

_Say… something. Anything._ Shoyo’s voice died down.

_I look forward to the day that we play again, Hinata,_ Kageyama turned around and smiled—that brat _smiled_ —at him, _until then, I don’t have much else to say._

Yes you do you’re lying.

_Then let’s break up_. Shoyo clenched his teeth, not even bothering to hide the defeat in his voice. _If you “don’t have much else to say”._

_Okay,_ Kageyama responded quietly, _if that’s what you want._

Why don’t you put up a fight? How can you just accept it? Don’t you—???

_Don’t tell me what I want!_

Shoyo stomped by Kageyama and bolted for home.

That was the last time he was with Kageyama privately, before Rio. He never said goodbye.

-

_Tobio-kun is a sore loser, is he not?_ Oikawa’s laugh grumbled from within his chest.

_I… guess._ Shoyo responded. The sense of dread crept up his spine.

_Ah, so was Iwa-chan,_ Oikawa said with a smile on his face, _he wouldn’t even respond to my texts in the beginning!_

That sounded an awful lot like a certain someone.

Shoyo studied Oikawa’s dim-lit face. His features were delicate and handsome, the maturity of his age lifted the childish and intentional look of smug away, replacing it with an effortless beauty. His signature half-smirk-half-smile was nowhere to be seen now, his lips only lifted the most subtle way, and the tips of his brows slightly knitted together. That look of blue didn’t belong on a character as bright as Oikawa Tooru.

Shoyo extended a hand and smoothed it out with the pads of his fingers.

It caught Oikawa in surprise. He turned to look at Shoyo with widened eyes. _Now what’s this…?_

Shoyo caught the rest of his words in a deep kiss. He finally understood that sense of doom he had been feeling. It was going through mourning, it was someone special slipping through the gaps between your fingers like sand, it was the inability to say goodbye.

Help me remember what home felt like, Oikawa-san, before that feeling of belonging was snatched from my hands again.

He didn’t say it out loud though. Because he knew, home, for Oikawa, was someone else.

-

_Well then, take care of yourself, chibi-chan—no._ Oikawa corrected himself and extended his hand, _Shoyo._

Shoyo went teary-eyed. He took the bigger hand into his own palms. _You bet I will! Thank you for everything._

And he meant it. In the past week, Oikawa had been his (literal) savior (from starving), his mentor, his companion, even his lover at one point.

_And you’re going back to Japan in two years?_

_Yep!_

Oikawa nodded, _by then will you be brave enough to face Tobio-kun?_

Shoyo scratched the back of his head, a little unsure. _Volleyball wise, I’m pretty confident. But feelings wise…_

Oikawa ruffled Shoyo’s hair with a wide grin, _I saw the way your eyes looked when you talked about him. Or home, for that matter. Either way, he’s still waiting for you in Japan, no?_

Shoyo’s throat clumped up. He nodded. Yeah, how could he have forgotten the promise they made on the day they broke up? One day, they would stand in front of each other on a wider, shinier court, whether it be on the same or different sides of the net. By then, Shoyo would know.

_Well, just remember though,_ Oikawa said, his eyes suddenly serious and determined, _I’m going to beat everyone. Be ready!_

Shoyo beamed so hard his vision blurred from his eyes squinting together. _Sure!_

_Ah well,_ Oikawa wheeled his suitcase and turned around, _see you later!_

Shoyo watched as Oikawa walked away to join the rest of his team, then he too, turned around. He mounted his bike, and pedaled off.

The beach breeze of the early morning softened the harsh rays of the sun, gently caressing Shoyo’s skin as he passed by buildings and crowds, intersections and markets. Rio was just bustling to life.

Home, Shoyo thought with a bittersweet taste on his tongue, is where you make it. And now, it was right here in Rio, the roads beneath his bike tires stretching to places he hadn’t even known.

Goodbye, until later.

**Author's Note:**

> hi this is sugarispoison :) i originally started this fic as a one-shot for hq angst week (it still is a one-shot for hq angst week), but it does fit very well w what i have in mind for a side story of a kagehina fic that will be in The Years series (which currently only has a [bokuaka fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27131959/chapters/66255448) and its [sidestory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27168424)). im not exactly sure when i will pull that one out of my ass just yet, but stay tuned if u wanna know more. 
> 
> any kudos/comments puts smiles on my face :,)
> 
> find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/sugar_is_poison)
> 
> NOW WITH A SISTER SMUT FIC, [on: What Happens in Rio Stays in Rio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28965699)!!!


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